Right at the moment, we're seeing something of an energy renaissance in the United States. Since resuming office, President Trump has made energy development one of his administration's priorities. "Drill, Baby, Drill" is now the policy. Here in Alaska, the North Slope and Cook Inlet are open for leasing and development. New roads are going to start winding into the wilderness to access not only oil and gas but rich troves of mineral wealth.
America is back in the energy business in a big way. These things take time, granted, but already we're starting to see some effect. Gas prices are slowly creeping downward, and the American people are going to see increased energy security: Oil and gas, which, along with nuclear power, make up the triad of secure, reliable, affordable energy, the energy on which our economy and our modern lifestyles depend.
Of course, the climate scolds are still complaining. One of the more recent strands of pearls they are clutching has to do with the rise of energy-hungry AI. Master Resource's Robert Bradley Jr. presents us with one of the more strident examples.
Holly Alpine, “climate strategist & campaign leader; co-founder, Enabled Emissions Campaign; Ex-Microsoft Sustainability board member; plant-based athlete,” recently posted on LinkedIn:
“Every Last Drop”… they’re not even trying to hide it at this point. You may have seen this new Wood Mackenzie report shared by Ketan Joshi or Pete Bronski, but I need to weigh in too, because… I hope now you see why Will and I quit our jobs to start our campaign on the topic.
Just two quotes:
• “Using our data on reservoir geology, hydrocarbon quality, in-place resources, operator access to finance and technology, costs and fiscal terms, we estimate upside oil recovery factors for every significant field in the world.”
• “The results of our new AI-powered analysis, therefore, are encouraging. Better recovery from existing fields could yield an additional 470 billion to over 1,000 billion barrels of oil”
Now, most regular folks would look at that and think, "Fantastic! that's a lot of reliable, affordable energy!" But most regular folks aren't climate scolds. Holly Alpine (that has to be a pseudonym) continues:
That’s a TRILLION ADDITIONAL barrels of oil [that] would not otherwise be possible.
Our math (thanks Chris Adams!) shows that could be 400 *gigatons* of emissions – using up the entire remaining 1.5 °C carbon budget, erasing decades of global climate progress, and gravely threatening a livable future on this planet. Is there any other issue on Earth that comes anywhere close to that scale of impact?
In plain language: fossil fuels were becoming too difficult and expensive to produce – until AI came along to make them profitable again. That isn’t “innovation” – it’s acceleration toward climate collapse.
No, it's not. It's acceleration towards a prosperous future. It's acceleration towards energy independence for the United States. Yes, AI is a very energy-intensive proposition, but that's fine; AI is also helping us to find and recover oil and gas. We are doing precisely what we should be doing here.
I'm fond of pointing out (and do so, continually) that we solve today's problems with tomorrow's technology. We're seeing that happen, right now, as AI becomes today's technology. For most of us concerned with our everyday lives, this is a boon, not a bane. Most of us are concerned with filling our gas tanks without taking out a second mortgage. We're concerned with heating our homes and businesses in the winter. We're concerned with cooling our homes in summer, or at least, you folks down in the lower 48 are. We can have oil and gas - and the AI that helps us to find it - without the planet catching fire, because it won't. Time and again, the scolds have made these dire predictions (I'm looking at you, Al Gore) and time and again, they've been wrong.
Read More: Drill, Baby, Drill: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Now Open to Drilling
If these people - "Holly Alpine" and her ilk - were serious, they would advocate for nuclear power. Instead of "Drill, Baby, Drill," they could adopt some other, similarly catchy slogan, like "Fission, Baby, Fission," or some such. Nuclear power is what they claim to want: Reliable, affordable, and clean. With the new, even safer and more efficient reactor designs, nuclear power is again an example of tomorrow's technology becoming today's technology.
And, who knows, maybe one of these fusion startups will manage to make a working reactor. Now that would be a serious game-changer.
In the meantime, there's a lot of oil and gas out there, under Alaska, under the Permian Basin, under the Gulf of America, and in many other places. Let's go get it. Let's have America be energy-secure and again a net energy exporter. Earth will go on operating on its own cycles, as it always has. Our efforts aren't serious enough to justify abandoning the technology that makes our modern lifestyles possible; if "Holly Alpine" and her ideological soulmates wish to save the planet, let them go live in an unheated grass shack with a truck garden out back.
The rest of us will go on moving into the future. Forward, not back. All that oil and gas aren't doing anyone any good staying in the ground. Let's go get it - every last drop.
